The company, which has gained great momentum with the RTX series, is a brand preferred by the players especially with the new technological developments it offers. NVIDIA, which has come to the fore among gamer hardware and achieved great success with its new cards released every year, was also known for its GTX series apart from the RTX series.
NVIDIA GTX 960 graphics card, which was released exactly 7 years ago in 2015, was a very popular and widely preferred card of its time. Will this card still work today? What games can we play with this card? Is the GTX 960 still worth buying? What are the pros and cons? Let’s look for answers to these questions together. Happy reading.
GTX 960 still worth buying? Pros and Cons:
- GTX 960’s pros:
- Able to find 2nd hand at an affordable price
- Get up-to-date driver support
- To play today’s competitive games can play comfortably
- Does not require a complete upgrade to the system
- Although not as efficient as DLSS with FSR, it provides a performance increase
- GTX 960’s cons:
- Possibility of experiencing the disadvantages of 2nd hand shopping
- Not containing ray tracing and DLSS technologies
- Uncertain time in driver support and possibility of low efficiency from updates
- Requirement to reduce graphics settings in games
GTX 960 pros:
GTX 960 is available at a good price on the used market:
NVIDIA GTX 960, released in 2015 A graphics card that has been discontinued by NVIDIA because it is an open card. So searching the secondhand market is the only option we already have. Especially nowadays, newly launched video cards are sold at very low prices. The second hand market is also not cheap, but you can find hardware that has stopped production and 7 years old, much cheaper than today’s graphics cards. Since the prices vary a lot according to the seller, it would not be right to give an estimated value, but it will be much more suitable than today’s new graphics cards.
GTX 960 is one of the cards that still has updated driver support:
It is a critical issue for gamers to update their graphics cards when the time comes. Driver updates are very important, especially in taking advantage of new technologies and optimizing the performance of your card. NVIDIA regularly provides its users with driver updates, and also does not deprive even very old cards of this update. The latest NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready driver version for 2022, 511.79 (February 2022), is also available for GTX 960 graphics cards.
The card can easily play most competitive games today:
The most important factor that is curious about graphics cards that have been on for a long time is the performance of the card in today’s games. The GTX 960 can easily play most of today’s competitive games and offers gamers quite adequate performance. Apart from this, it is a video card that has the potential to play today’s AAA games, even at low-medium settings, while it can easily play the games of its release year.
For GTX 960, you probably won’t need to upgrade your system completely:
System upgrade, generally like the motherboard, processor, RAM and graphics card inside the computer means replacing hardware with more powerful new hardware. As the graphics cards get stronger, it is necessary to obtain processor models that are compatible with these cards and will not create a bottleneck effect. Unfortunately, a very low processor cannot feed a powerful graphics card and creates a bottleneck in the system.
This problem will disappear for you if your system is not very old, because the GTX 960, the graphics card of 7 years ago and the processors it needs are much older. In other words, it is very likely that you can run a GTX 960 compatible with an average processor you bought 7 years ago. If you had switched to an RTX card, your 7-year-old processor might not be enough or compatible with these cards.
AMD’s FSR technology can also work on NVIDIA cards:
GTX 960 unfortunately does not support DLSS technology because it is not an RTX card, but AMD’s Fidelity Super You can also turn on this feature with your NVIDIA card in games that support resolution technology. The only condition is that the game has FSR support. Let’s not go without mentioning, FSR technology cannot yet work as efficiently as DLSS, but we can say that it is better than nothing.
GTX 960’s cons:
It’s very important to pay attention to the disadvantages of second hand shopping:
Yes, it’s the biggest second hand market in the pros. We talked about the affordable price, which is a plus, but there are also some disadvantages of this situation. The used market has a very complex structure. It is impossible to know with complete accuracy the condition of the products that users put up for sale. Although you can talk to the seller for a long time and get detailed information, but since the card is 7 years old, it may be very worn, badly used, worn and battered. Although it has seen a lot of technical service hands, this may cause serious problems in the future. A GTX 960 that you find at a very affordable price can give you a headache, so we recommend you buy it from reliable vendors after getting detailed information about the card.
Our card does not support Ray Tracing and DLSS technologies:
GTX 960, known as real ray tracing because it is an old card, is Ray Tracing, which NVIDIA put into its own production. unfortunately does not support RTX with name. We can say that it is a card that unfortunately cannot help players looking for a high-level gaming experience. As for DLSS, a very successful and popular technology that gives players a minimum of 10-15 FPS in games, DLSS cannot be opened on a GTX 960 graphics card. It is not possible to have the two most important technologies of today with this card. So raising expectations too high can do more harm than good.
There may be a slight downside to driver support:
Although NVIDIA continues to offer driver support to most users for years to come, This may change in 5 years. This is not very likely because NVIDIA will apparently continue to support the GTX 960 for at least 1-2 more years. In terms of efficiency, we can say that when we look at new drivers, we see that they are mostly drivers that are compatible with and adapted to new technologies and new cards. Of course, it is not a huge disadvantage, but the graphics drivers are the most compatible and efficient with RTX cards.
You are likely to need to lower the graphics settings in games:
Naturally, newly released games need much higher system requirements. With RTX on, RTX off, 60 FPS, 30 FPS and many other settings, the requirements can go to extremes. Our GTX 960 graphics card, on the other hand, may have problems removing today’s games with high system requirements, so you may need to reduce the graphics settings to the lowest when necessary. For this reason, we recommend you to buy this card by risking playing at low settings in some games.
Some games you can play with GTX 960 and the performance you will get:
- VALORANT
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
- Counter Strike: Global Offensive
- Grand Theft Auto V
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Forza Horizon 5
- Dying Light 2
- God of War
VALORANT: 120 FPS at medium settings
Riot Games’ popular competitive FPS game VALORANT with GTX 960 It’s a game you can play easily. Since it is a processor-based game, the processor you have has a great contribution to FPS, but we can say that according to the tests, you can play VALORANT at minimum 120 FPS at 1080p low-medium settings, even with bad processor combinations. This FPS value can go up to 200 with powerful processors. In short, if we go through an example, if you have a 144 Hz monitor and your processor is not very old and bad, you can play VALORANT quite fluently.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege: 80.3 FPS at high settings
The successful Ubisoft game Rainbow Six Siege, which is also included in the Xbox Game Pass library, is not as much as it used to be today. popular enough. If you have a Gamepass subscription and want to know how you can get performance in this game with the GTX 960, let’s take a look together. According to UserBenchmark data, an average of 80.3 FPS was achieved in 101 tests performed at 1080p high settings. This is a pretty smooth value, but if you prefer a 144 Hz monitor, you’ll have to turn the settings down a bit.
Counter Strike: Global Offensive: 138 FPS at maximum setting
CS: GO, developed by Valve and not getting old for years, but losing serious players with VALORANT, GTX 960 It is one of the games that the graphics card can easily play. According to UserBenchmark data, the average result of 1031 tests at 1080p maximum settings was 138 FPS. This means that you can enjoy the game quite fluently without the need to change settings and resolution. If you have a 165 Hz or higher monitor, you may need to lower the settings a little more.
Grand Theft Auto V: 41.6 FPS at maximum setting
Grand Theft Auto V, one of the games that hasn’t worn out for years, can be said to be the apple of the eye of Rockstar Games. In addition to the single-player mode, it is still played by many players today, along with GTA Online and many RP servers. When we look at the UserBenchmark data, 41.6 FPS was achieved as an average of 227 tests at 1080p maximum settings. If you are one of those who do not like to go below 60 FPS in games, 58.3 FPS was seen in 1080p high settings, so we can say 60 FPS. The GTX 960 also offers quite adequate performance in the GTA V game.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: 36.7 FPS at maximum settings
CD Projekt RED’s legendary game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a game where players will still be able to turn around. in which she plays, maybe just Gwent, but somehow her paths cross. Those who prefer 60 FPS in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt may be a little upset, but when we look at the data, we see 36.7 FPS at 1080p maximum settings. If you are going to prefer 60 FPS, turning down the graphics setting does not help much, because the setting where the average FPS values approach 60 the most is in the 720p resolution setting. On some systems, you can go above 60 in 1080p resolution, but we consider the average. The GTX 960 does not perform badly in The Witcher 3, although not as much as other games.
Red Dead Redemption 2: 45 FPS at low setting
Rockstar Games’ successful game RDR 2, which requires a very high system and achieves 60 FPS. one of the hardest games. According to the test on a computer with an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X processor, the game runs at around 45 FPS at 1080p low settings. If you lower the resolution to 720p your FPS will go above 60. The GTX 960 may satisfy some gamers, even if it demands resolution to be waived.
Forza Horizon 5: 60 FPS at Medium setting
Now let’s get to today’s productions. The games that the GTX 960 will probably be tested the most are the newly released games. Forza Horizon 5, developed by Playground Games and which you can easily play with your Xbox Game Pass subscription, is among the popular games of 2021. Depending on the processor, the game can easily run at around 60 FPS at 1080p medium settings with the GTX 960. If your processor is a little better, it is possible to capture 60 FPS even at 1080p high settings. In ultra settings, the system may start to struggle.
Dying Light 2: 38 FPS at low setting
Dying Light 2, developed by Techland and expected to be released for a long time, has not been released for a long time. Dying Light 2, which is quite new, can seriously challenge old systems, especially. In new systems, it is possible to gain serious FPS, especially with DLSS, but since the GTX 960 does not support DLSS, the FSR we mentioned in the plus part will come into play here.
Dying Light 2 supports AMD’s FSR technology and it becomes possible to achieve FPS gain. GTX 960 1080p averages 38 FPS in FSR balanced mode at lowest settings. You can see much higher values when you try 900p or 720p resolution, but it will be very difficult to see 60 FPS, as FSR is much less efficient than DLSS and the image quality deteriorates. Therefore, if you are stubborn about 60 FPS, Dying Light 2 will not be a game that can be played with this card.
God of War: 52 FPS in low setting
Let’s talk about the last game. God of War made its PC debut quite a while ago and has been receiving a lot of attention. In God of War, whose system requirements are not very high, but which can naturally force old systems, the performance of GTX 960 can reach a sufficient level with FSR and a little resolution reduction. In an example test, an average of 52 FPS was captured at 720p resolution with FSR turned on and low settings, but these values may vary slightly depending on your processor, as in every test.
As a result, in this game, you can have a satisfying gameplay experience by sacrificing the resolution, lowering the graphics settings and getting help from FSR support, but we recommend that you do not keep your expectations too high.
Conclusion: Will the GTX 960 be bought in 2022?
When we come to the conclusion part, first of all, GTX 960 is a very old card and you should not keep your expectations too high. Although it is an old card, there are cases where it performs quite surprisingly. Depending on the power of your processor, it is possible to get very satisfactory results in games. We recommend that you analyze the pros and cons thoroughly and make your decision accordingly. The resolution and graphics settings you expect from games are also very important. If you can waive the resolution and graphics settings when necessary, the GTX 960 should not be a problem for you. If you have games and FPS tests in mind, you can check out UserBenchmark’s other GTX 960 data by clicking here.
What do you guys think about the GTX 960? Have you had the opportunity to use it? Is it still preferable today? Share your valuable opinions with us in the comments section.
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